DAWNRIDGE

Los Altos Hills, California

We began by re-envisioning the site as a reawakened fragment of the natural environment, a suburban Silicon Valley setting. The project presents a powerful departure from the otherwise increasingly urban character of the local landscape, and reconnects the site to its larger—and often forgotten—ecological context. The architecture strives to re-establish its location as a fundamentally wild place.

The design began with a habitat designation of over fifty percent of the site, and the restoration of an intermittent stream that winds along the northern edge. In developing the spaces and sequences of movement, we paid careful attention to an innate desire to follow the patterns and processes of water.

The house is a low-sloped ranch form that splits around the giant live oak tree to form a courtyard, offering a chance for outdoor living under a magnificent tree canopy. The two-sided symmetry is broken by the northern half of the structure appearing to drift off, following the bend of the stream in accordance with this innate water attunement.